02.18.10
Posted in Europe, Google, IBM, Interoperability, Law, Microsoft, Mono, Patents, Red Hat, Samba, Servers, UNIX at 6:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
THIS post will be kept as short and compressed as possible due to lack of time.
Centrify
Centrify is a company whose genesis we explained before (Microsoft). We do not trust Centrify and its new product does not excite us because it brings Microsoft patents over to UNIX and Linux instead of encouraging standards. But anyway, here is its latest press release:
The new DirectManage Deployment Manager discovers UNIX and Linux systems within the environment, determines their readiness to join Active Directory, and enables administrators to promptly deploy the Centrify Suite to the targeted systems, and join the systems to the Active Directory domain.
The problem with Active Directory is similar to the problem with Mono and Moonlight. With Samba, Microsoft is at least forced to play nice (because of the European Commission).
Google
It is no secret that Google has been somewhat of a problem when it comes to software patents (just like IBM). We have already produced a lot of evidence, including videos that show Google executives talking about the subject, but here is more new evidence for the pile:
Google Patents Country-Specific Content Blocking
theodp writes “Today Google was awarded US Patent No. 7,664,751 for its invention of Variable User Interface Based on Document Access Privileges, which the search giant explains can be used to restrict what Internet content people can see ‘based on geographical location information of the user and based on access rights possessed for the document.’ From the patent: ‘For example, readers from the United States may be given “partial” access to the document while readers in Canada may be given “full” access to the document. This may be because the content provider has been granted full rights in the document from the publisher for Canadian readers but has not been granted rights in the United States, so the content provider may choose to only enable fair use display for readers in the United States.’ Oh well, at least Google is ‘no longer willing to continue censoring [their] results on Google.cn.’”
That is a soft patent.
Red Hat
Rob Tiller, a top Red Hat lawyer who frequently speaks about the subject of software patents, has just unleashed this post titled “Calling a troll a troll” (with the picture we used a few weeks ago).
It is clear enough what message Tiller is trying to get across:
There is increasing recognition in the FOSS ecosystem that troll lawsuits are a serious problem for open source. This is an unfortunate but real indicator of the remarkable success of open source. As the profits and profiles of open source products have risen, even trolls have taken note. So much for the good news. The bad news is that trolls view open source like a Somali pirate views a container ship – that is, purely as a target. Troll lawsuits are at best a tax on collaborative innovation and at worst, for a particular target, an existential threat.
Quintura
Speaking of trolls, here is what DownloadSquad has to say about Quintura: “Quintura chooses software patent claims as revenue stream”
I’m not a fan of software patents, and I’m particularly not a fan of companies who use them as a business model. While the concept of patenting software makes sense, in practice it is a complete mess.
Patents are not products. They are only a hindrance.
ACTA
On many occasions in the past we’ve explained why ACTA makes the patent system even worse. The president of the FFII therefore tracks developments around the ACTA and some days ago he showed a European “MEP ask[ing] for ACTA docs, [should] start a motion based on Lisbon Article 218 “parliament fully informed”.” He also wrote about a “New ACTA leak, it is a memo from the European Commission to the European Parliament INTA (LIMITED!)”
The cited posts are not in English [1, 2], but they hopefully help. The FFII’s president is Belgian. Yesterday he linked to this article and wrote that the “European Parliament points to the high cost of the patent system for SMEs, and the threat of litigation of patent trolls.”
This system needs mending, but ACTA takes it in the very opposite direction. █
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Posted in Apple, Bill Gates, Deception, DRM, Microsoft at 5:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and steal the stereo.”
–Bill Gates, Microsoft
Summary: Steve Jobs to help glorify himself as departure may be imminent
APPLE is failing to innovate in recent years. What have they got? The atrocious iPad [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]? It may soon join this new list of “top 10 worst Apple products of all time” as it is already harshly criticised for its risky DRM experiments:
Apple is dusting off FairPlay – the digital rights management used by iTunes – to protect electronic copies of books sold to iPad users.
Apple sells overpriced computers for no defensible reason. Recent surveys showed Mac hardware to be defective hardware, more so than non-Apple PCs, so Apple responds with extended warranties, not improved quality of components (Apple hardware, just like most hardware, is made in China and then badged with the Apple logo).
But anyway, what we found most curious are these many articles about a New York Times report.
Steve Jobs has put himself on a par with Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin in anointing the man he would like to write his official biography. Maybe.
That’s not good. People writing (or assisting the writing of) their own biography, as opposed to autobiography? Dangerous territories there. Let’s learn our lessons from Gates and his foundation, which is being used for monopolisation and self glorification more than anything else. Neither Apple nor Microsoft brought us the GUI for example, yet they claim credit for far too many things. Those two companies brought proprietary software to people’s desktops, including all sorts of malicious features like DRM and remote kill switches. The last thing the world needs is to have these people rewrite history. As Richard Stallman stated in his BBC piece, “Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now. Dismantling them is up to us.” █
“Remala was tired of working on languages and was ready for a new challenge. Gates gave him one: develop a graphics-based windowing shell just like VisiOn, only better.
“Remala and McCabe studied Xerox PARC’s Star system, which Gates had purchased for Microsoft to reverse engineer. The $15,000 Star system had one of the most innovative interfaces available at the time. Icons of familiar objects like desktop folders, documents, and in-baskets decorated the screen.”
–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul
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Posted in Antitrust, Finance, Microsoft, Novell at 5:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s debt and Novell’s debt revisited
A COUPLE a years ago we noted that Microsoft had lost 18 billion dollars in 1998 (when Microsoft was in huge trouble with the law, later to face breakup) and a few days ago we wrote about Microsoft's CFO being paid millions of dollars under peculiar circumstances that are familiar [1, 2].
The following new post is titled “Can big companies adapt?” It refers to the fact that Microsoft fails to innovate while Microsoft itself is lying about its innovations [1, 2, 3, 4]. Here is the curious part about “debt-financed balance sheet” (as above):
You start. You struggle against initial inertia to gain velocity. You succeed. You grow. Your success breeds more success. Momentum is now your friend. But the world changes: technology, markets, society… And your hard won momentum keeps hurtling your (now large and profitable) company down the same trajectory. And momentum is now your enemy. Ah, the joys of…inertia.
[...]
This indeed was my prescription for Microsoft when I wrote two years ago that they should break-up the company and re-jig the capital structure, running the Windows/Office businesses for cash (with a debt financed balance sheet) and let a thousand new baby Microsofts bloom.
We wish to remind readers that Microsoft is already borrowing money and just because a company has money in the bank does not mean that it’s not borrowed money. Two years ago, around March of 2008, Microsoft’s CFO (the one who left and was mysteriously paid millions of dollars not to speak out or to sue Microsoft) was approaching the bank for a potential loan of over $20 billion. This was reported by the mainstream press, Reuters included. For those who do not know, Novell was about half a billion dollars in debt just a few years ago (it still has a considerable debt). It is not unusual for companies to quietly operate under debt, but that being the case, we thought it was worth bringing up. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 7, Vista 8, Windows at 5:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Improper comparisons even from Linux-branded Web sites are only helping Microsoft sell fantasy
WE were rather upset to see Vista 8 vapourware being directly compared to a release of GNU/Linux which is just 2 months ago. These are precisely the type of comparisons Microsoft wants people to see because it deceives and thus it “freezes the market”. See proof below. █
“In the face of strong competition, Evangelism’s focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
“The purpose of announcing early like this is to freeze the market at the OEM and ISV level. In this respect it is JUST like the original Windows announcement…
“One might worry that this will help Sun because we will just have vaporware, that people will stop buying 486 machines, that we will have endorsed RISC but not delivered… So, Scott, do you really think you can fight that avalanche?”
–Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft
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Posted in Europe, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 5:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Response to a new claim that the BSA is good for Free Software (the reality is more complex than it may seem)
WHEN does the BSA cross the line and become helpful to Free software in the same sense that banks running Windows provide an advert to GNU/Linux (due to Windows’ failings)? We previously showed that BSA lobbying played a role in characterising Free software as illegal. Setting aside the Microsoft/Gates (senior) roots in the BSA [1, 2], one might reach the conclusion that the BSA not only enforces the rules of proprietary software; in order to defend its existence, the BSA also attacks the right of Free software to exist.
Nonetheless, here is an opinion piece which insists that the BSA is good for Free Software because of the intimidating crackdowns.
There are a few good reasons why open source fans should support the Business Software Alliance.
I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I dislike the Business Software Alliance (BSA). It’s questionable statistics and its sweeping generalisations make for annoying reading at the best of times. But recently I’ve been thinking that perhaps open source advocates should get behind the BSA.
The reality is not that simple and the main question is, does the benefit of BSA aggression outweigh the negatives? It’s an open question.
Jon “maddog” Hall has also just written about the subject, although less directly:
Several times I have written about “Software Piracy”, and I think a lot of my readers get a little tired of hearing about it, but something happened this week that started me thinking about Software Piracy again.
Microsoft made Software Piracy Prevention a voluntary thing.
Of course Microsoft will probably pitch a different explanation, but what they actually did was post an “update” to Windows 7 that had lots of anti-piracy software in it, and told their customers that it was “voluntary” to install the anti-piracy software.
Now this was probably in response to another time when Microsoft tried to force down the throats, er….ah…”distribute” anti-piracy software for Windows XP, but that time they called it “critical bug fixes” and made a lot of their customers mad because they installed the “bug fixes” and ….hello! The “fixes” did not fix any bugs, and in some cases caused the customer’s systems to act in very bad ways. Very, very bad ways! And of course Microsoft’s customers then acted in very, very bad ways.
This is a subject that we covered some days ago, as well as last week. Generally speaking, pressure on users of proprietary software is always a good thing for Free software, but those who apply this pressure are also lobbying against Free software and the pressure they apply to users gives them money and thus more power to lobby (self enrichment). Microsoft’s “Under NO circumstances lose to Linux” approach shows how far they would go. Consider Munich for example. Slashdot reported that “Steve Ballmer’s recent trip to Munich to offer up to 90% rebates for the Microsoft Software Assurance and Licenses was in vain.” Microsoft is cracking down and pricing down selectively, so it’s not so simple after all.
Speaking of the BSA and preference for proprietary software, a Sirius employee implicitly calls for a boycott of UK ICT (maybe including BECTA):
Nearly forgot to mention the Microsoft-Cabinet Office’s latest Child Protection wheeze I blogged about last time.
Have a care if your children have access to IE8 and CEOPS; at a click you could be in the frame as a potential abuser.
This little list will do for the time being.
If I were still a teacher I would be mightily fed up with the above.
If we want to extend learning using modern technology, as most politicians seem to wish to do, then we need to sort out how it should be used.
Meanwhile teachers: band together and boycott ICT that’ll give them a fright.
This IE8 promotion from the government is quite a fiasco that we wrote about last week. But given the relationship we have witnessed between the UK government and the BSA, for example, none of this is terribly surprising. It’s a brutal pairing [1, 2, 3]. █
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